"But I will!" he exclaimed desperately. "If you'll only help me out of this, I'll live straight to my dying day! You don't know how I've suffered, Harry, or you'd have some mercy on me now! I can never get away from it! That's why I was drunk to-day. Night and day I see him--Moreau, as I saw him lying here that night on the hillside. He haunts me! You don't know what it means to be always afraid, to wake up in the night with the feel of handcuffs on your wrists, to know that such a thing is behind you, following you, following you, never letting you rest, never forgetting!" A choking sob burst from his lips. "Let me go, Harry," he pleaded; "for my father's sake!" "Your father is dead," said Harry. "Then for old-time's sake!" He tried to clasp Harry's knees. "They may be here at any minute! I must have been seen as I crossed the mountain! I thought it would never come out, or I wouldn't have come! I'll go far enough away. I'll go to South America, and you will never see me alive again, neither you nor Jessica! I knew her voice just now--I know she's here. I don't care how or why! You don't need to give me up to get her! I'll give her to you! For God's sake, Harry, listen! Jessica wouldn't want to see me hung! For _her_ sake!" Harry caught his breath sharply. The thrust had gone deep; it had sheared through the specious arguments he had been weaving. The commandment that an hour before had etched itself in letters of fire upon his eyelids hung again before him. He had coveted his neighbor's wife. This man, felon as he was--pitiful hound to whom the news of his father's death brought no flicker of sorrow or remorse, who now offered to barter Jessica for his own safety!--he himself, however unwittingly, had irreparably wronged. Between them stood the accusing wraith of one immortal hour, when the heart of love had beat against his own. If he delivered Hugh to the hangman, would it be for justice's sake? The scales fell from his eyes. For him, loving Jessica, it could be only a dastard act. Yet if he aided the real Hugh to escape, he, the supposititious Hugh who had played his rôle, must continue it. He must second the villainy, and in so doing play the cheaply tragic part. He must pose as an accused murderer before the town whose good opinion he had longed to gain--before Jessica!--until Hugh had had time to win safe away! He might do even more. The real Hugh would stand small chance; even were the evidence not flawless, the old record would condemn him. But he himself had lightened that record. He had gained liking and sympathy; there might be a chance for him of acquittal.